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@Scyris This isn´t about how i locate my skillpoints, this is about crafting only beeing possible and viable if you go looting constantly. You can´t just do a wilderness playtrough and only go looting if you need something non craftable. You can´t do a mix of living in the wilderness, building your castle or whatever and going looting splitting it up 50/50. You will fall behind your gamestage very soon with your crafting skills, you will not have enough water. It´s basically loot or die now.

It means that replayability took a big hit in the face. Any other playstyle other than constantly going looting got eliminated with A21.

Grenades saved me a few times alerady doing T5´s and T6 quests with those nasty trap rooms that you drop into and can´t get out quickly anymore. And yes demolition perk does give you quite a boost in damage. There is also the AtomJunkie candy. It gives you another 50% bonus damage for explosives. A grenade does 341 damage with an area effect of 5 blocks radius. With demolition expert maxed out that´s 512 damage. With the Atomjunkies that´s 768 damage. Compare that to any gun wich can´t damage a whole group of zombies within that 5 block radius. It´s a no brainer for me personally tbh as i am going heavily into perception anyways in my SP using the spear. Great crowd control aswell with the knock back, you can set up "traps" by dropping them at doors without pulling the pin and throwing another one there when they pass that door. ALso 100% stun chance with only 2 points in the skill.

@Old Crow Heh. Yeah. I know. But wrenching steel for a 5 player hordebase that needs to deal with 64 zombies is not really possible. We usually get demos on day 28 in MP Coop. But i should get to the crucible before day 28, i have 4 forges full with iron and clay so i just need to craft the steel and upgrade the base. We should be fine even with concrete for that night though. That is if no elite demolisher shows up (modded in elite zombies to spice things up a bit) then we are f´d if one of those blows.

Well good for you. We don´t have a crucible yet on day 24. I started building that big hordebase to use after our initial one on day 12 already even though we won´t need it before day 28. No steel that early and upgrading gives you XP. A lot of them. Also you get a lot of stone anyways when mining and afaik steel blocks do take ages to craft, so i rather upgrade instead. And in SP you can go with concrete for a long time. You actually only really need steel once the demolishers show up wich is usually on day 49 or 56 and even then you can go without steel if you aim carefully and have more than one path to your position.

I would even say that investing in EyeCandy is the better deal for early game than wasting points if someone is really eager for more lootstage. They do give you +5 lootstage and a 10% increase of your lootstage.

@theFlu I have yet to get a day one where i end up on more than lootstage 6 on day one 22:00pm. And 2 points of lucky looter give me 10% lootstage. So rounded up it´s lootstage 7 then. The first better loot starts at lootstage 8. Wich would be T3 of the primitive stuff. Only a chance for it, not guaranteed, you could still get T2 stuff instead. If you go into a T2 building there is a small chance for better loot with LL at 2 ofc. But it´s still not worth the 2 points that early.

@theFlu Yes, but i doubt that. I did three day one runs without lucky looter meanwhile and all were similar in loot as what was posted in his first post. One run had even significantly more ammo.

It´s literally impossible that you get anything better on day one due to lucky looter. There is no difference in loot between having lootstage 6 and lootstage 7. Take a look at the loot tables and you will see why lucky looter is a mid game perk. At lootstage 50 is where it start´s to matter a bit, that´s when you can get a T3 AK47 with a lootstage of 55. Sure there is really small benefits below that, but do you really care about the tier on your padded cloth and stone tools instead of getting more magazines for your other skills? You would get that better quality stone axe a few ingame hours later anyways. Like said, if you start in the wasteland with T3 POI´s it´s a different story. But doing that you need your points elsewhere to not die all the time. And it doesn´t affect how many pipe guns or armor pieces your find. It only effects the lootstage and time you need to loot. Finding 4 pipe weapons on day one is purely RNG. I had that already aswell with no lucky looter. Pipe weapons do not spawn in T1 quality btw. T2 is the lowest quality that you can loot. Nice map. Did you make that?

Yeah the staggering towards you is sooo annoying. Not because it makes it harder, it´s just so utterly wrong. It bothers me every single time. I gave him a good smash with a steel club or whatever i use. The chances of that actually happening when you hit someone are very near to zero. Sadly i think it´s intentional. And a really cheap way of creating more difficulty.

I mean the numbers speak for itself. An increase of 0.6 isn´t worth it. Not even an increase of 5 would be worth it on day one tbh. That changes literally nothing in the loot pool. As long as your lootstage is too low, it´s points that could be more usefull elsewhere. Was already like that before A21 and is even more true for A21 as you can get more magazines for the skills you put points in. This isn´t new, well known for quite a while now. Unless you instantly go T3 or higher POI´s and/or other biomes, it´s basically useless early game.

@Scyris Yeah vultures are flying death threats now. There is a bunch of rooftop end fights so you have not much room and time to recover if one of them gets you. Also the bleeding seems to drain your health much faster now.

That´s acutally one tpye of a wandering horde that can happen. Doesn´t matter where you are.

I had a zombie laying on the ground giving me a concussion without moving yesterday. Very nice and logical. Breaking my leg? Yeah sure, why not. Moving arms or not, i should be aware that the Z isn´t dead yet jjust because he is lying on the ground. But a concussion?

Critical injuries are a bit on the harsh side atm. Nothing a experienced player can´t handle. I remember my first zombie hit in A21. Instant concussion, i kill him and the next one, move on to the next room and the next zombie hits me and gives me bleeding. Overall i had 4 critical injuries and 3 times bleeding on day one. A bit too much for new players, i have to agree here and difficulty settings can´t really change that.

I did a day one, also 60 mins and 18 hours of daylight, pine forest biome, doing a gas station T1 quest (double dip), boe´s market T1 quest (no double dip) and a T2 house (kitchen and end loot only), a bunch of cars ond ofc the trader compound. Points went to Salvage Operations, Master Chef, Pummel Pete and Advanced Engineering. Got 17 murky water, 1 honey, 1 painkiller, 1 vitamin, 4 first aid bandages, 1 cooking pot, 31 7.62mm, 17 9mm, 10 shotgun shells, a T1 wrench, Bunkerbuster, ergonomic grip x1, serrated blade x2, T2 Pipe Shotgun, T2 Pipe RIfle, T3 padded leg, T2 padded chest, 7 cooking magazines and 5 forge ahead (plus a lot of other books and magazines). Wich granted me a forge in night 1 wich means iron arrows on day 2 only because i put one point in advanced engineering. (no quest rewards included here) I rather do heavy looting on day one that putting points in lucky looter that early wich only increases my lootstage very minimal. In a T1 POI i have a lootstage of 6 at the end of day one. Wich means 2 points of lucky looter would make this 6.6 so propably 7. Not worth anything. Lucky looter is a mid game perk. Trader distance from spawn point was 1km btw

Also check out CautiousPancake and Jawoodle for hord base ideas and tutorials.

That seemed oddly low to me. So i quickly grabbed a level 6 stun baton from creative menu and it does a melee damage of 29.9 with a normal attack and 49.9 with a power attack while the block damage is 18. Unless you are talking about an acutal plasma baton and that supposedly higher tier weapon (at least in DF it is the higher tier) does less damage.

Shovel is for clay, sand and such. Pickaxe for stone and metal. The Auger is faster than the pickaxe and can also do clay and sand, but also generates heat faster when harvesting stone and metal so screamers come faster. Steel knuckles do give you the same harvest as a machete. The boxes for paper and scrap polymer are best done with the fire/steel axe. For melee it´s meanwhile really a matter of taste. On paper the sledgehammer does the most damage and has the group knockdown, but it´s also slow and needs a lot of stamina. Clubs don´t do that much damage but are faster and use less stamina. Knives and machetes have the bleeding going for them. I do prefer spears since A21 for their incredible reach. Even the stun baton isn´t useless anymore. I just started trying it and so far i am not dissapointed.

Forest/Burnt Forest (custom map not even sure if burnt has a higher lootstage, it´s half a skull) no wasteland/snow/desert involved. Loot/rewards can be OP af. For loot the POI lootstage seems way to high to keep up with the character progression if you keep questing wich the water and crafting skills changes make you do.

@Rince No DA or LL, my buddy got the same with using the club. Wood tier 3 was the only one he crafted and on day 10 he had a t3 steel club.

It´s always on the screen? Even when not using it? People on twitch must use mods then to hide it. Can´t see anyone who doesn´t use it having it on screen. But still, big things that block the view and ask me to log in even when i don´t wanna use them, are a huge nogo for me if i would watch a lot of twitch. Infact that´s the reason i don´t watch streamers because usually they have too much stuff on the screen already. Rather watch YT tbh.

Well then they should make sure the game doesn´t send you in a biome with higher lootstage if you happen to spawn near biome borders, at least in early game. That is a balance issue imo. Asking the player to ignore the cars on the road right next to where he lives when sent into that biome for a quest is quite lazy. Also you find way better loot than you can craft in the forest already due to POI lootstage. Or are we also supposed to regulate that balance by ourselves by only doing T1 and T2 POI`s making the game repetitive?

Wait. You are telling us it´s impossible for the game to know what my crafting skill is? How? It might be a challenge to code it right, but as the game does very well know what my crafting skills are (i mean how else would the game know what i am able to craft and what is still locked?), i am sure it is possible to make a link with the trader rewards/inventory and loot pool. Maybe too much work, but possible for sure. I also don´t see how this would make the game more complicated. The crafting skills beeing in relation with the rewards/loot/inventory wouldn´t change the gameplay at all. It would still work the same. And a good balance is something the game needs when going gold. Not months or years after that.

I just stumbled upon the District Zero Mod and was surprised what a difference a few trees can make when i gave it a quick testrun to take a look at the skill tree and such. It´s only a few trees but imo the result is amazing (not that i am not happy with current graphic though). So can we have more different trees? https://steamcommunity.com/id/heinziheinz/screenshot/2048623604681189377/